How To Solve: Cannot Write to Ext3 or Ext4 Partition

Problem:

While installing fresh new Ubuntu 12.04, I created an extra ext3 partition exclusively for Linux usage along with my Root, Swap and Home partition. Problem occurred when I tried to copy something in that particular ext3 partition. I did not have write permission to it. I was surprised to know that I cannot create a folder in the ext3 partition.

Reason:

When I looked at the properties of the ext3 partition, I found that the owner of the partition was root and not the default administrative user.

Solution:

Since the owner was root, the obvious thing to do was to change the owner from root to my default user. I’ll give step-by-step procedure which I followed. The whole procedure is followed in terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T).

First thing, change the user to root:

sudo su

Now, identify the partition you are dealing with. Use the fdisk command to see the partitions, their sizes and their type. The output may seem like this:

The partition which was looking for was /dev/sda7 which I identified by its size (approx. 78 GB). Once you got the partition’s device number, its time to find out its UUID. Use the blkid command for that:

About Abhishek Prakash

I am a professional software developer, and founder of It's FOSS. I am an avid Linux lover and Open Source enthusiast. I use Ubuntu and believe in sharing knowledge. Apart from Linux, I love classic detective mysteries. I'm a huge fan of Agatha Christie's work.

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